Purpose In Italy, worker cooperatives (WCs), whose workers hold major control rights over collectively-owned assets, are the leading vehicle for the promotion and development of employee ownership. Worker cooperatives are present in all regions and in most economic sectors, employing about...

The paper offers a contribution to the understanding of the relations between incentives, satisfaction and performance of employees in social enterprises. It starts by criticizing the general hypotheses of the principal-agent theory and especially that employee satisfaction is determined...